Public Dungeons - You won't like it.. but it has to be done.

thilog · April 2014

Something has to be done about the public dungeon and skill pt dungeon botting. Or even just mob/boss grinding.

I realise they drop nice loot, but I was clearing up my quests in shadowfen tonight, which is your lv 24-30 area, you'd be lucky to get a hit on the boss before it dies in most of the dungeons.

I was thinking the boss spawns, but drops loot only once per player, so when a player gets his hit in, he gets the loot drop and the complete. That's it.

This would of course push these grinders back into the main maps, back into the game. Which has it's own issues. When there's 40-50 people running around looking for things to kill.. there's nothing to kill. Makes you realise, just how small the maps are, given they're pretty big.. there's lots to do, if you follow the quest lines, getting to 50 is just a matter of following them..

As for crafting.. from level 1 to 20 I made my own armour.. at lv 22 onwards, I just use what i get from drops or quests. I still deconstruct the blues, which drops the ability to upgrade greens to blues and makes for some fairly decent armour. This is in part due to the total lack of resources. You're lucky to see a log or ore that doesn't have 5 people sprinting towards it.

I've seen it said in many other posts, that people think they cut corners to release and I must admit.. with that massive list of testers.. it does make me wonder what the hell they tested. Almost everything quest needs balanced with faster spawns or slower spawns, easier boss mobs in some cases harder ones.. there's a ton of stuff in the skills that need massive nerfs and balancing, there's obvious collision issues in places, including a tree thats about 30m long in shadowfen that only has a texture on one side.. on the other.. you can't even see it. It's like you hit an invisible wall.. unfortunately it's also surrounded by wasps so I couldn't bug it. As the bug's got me first.

There's also this 5 skills thing.. i don't care if you can swap them for 5 others.. you get 5 skills per weapon type, 15 skills for your class skills alone.. and you need to pick only 5 of them.. it's stupid and annoying, having to switch out skills with almost every mob.

But.. the game, itself, is fun.. I've thoroughly enjoyed playing so far. so I guess to sum up..

The problem with this game.. besides a number of design flaws.. are the people playing it. You know the ones, the botters, the grinders, the ninjas (that wait for you to engage, then steal what you were going for) the ones that stand there, in front of the bank, with their pets, blocking access to everyone else.. the ones that sprint past you, because they ore node, is just so theirs.. and all the ones that draw negativity from my post. Because you're actually the trolls.

DragonMother · April 2014

As one of the Sanguine beta group testers, I'm inclined to disagree. The majority of the issues is the simple fact that ZOS was unprepared for the amount of goldsellers, botters, and hackers that this game has drawn to it's world. The people that are outright breaking the TOS should be reported, immediately. Whether they are blocking some path in-game, or causing blatant disruptions on the forums to draw negativity and arguing, there are tools to inform the CS to handle them.

Most of the issues I've seen involving the bugs, breaks, and issues with other players can easily be solved if players reporting them would use keywords. Game breaking bugs usually require a bit of time to get fixed, and a lot of the times the tickets are closed on those without a working response on available player side repairs. Majority of the time, the bad responses from the game customer service team can be reopened by submitting the ticket number to the CS's on the board here in PM and any questions you had involving said ticket, but most of them are so busy just trying to handle the thousands upon thousands of tickets involving these same said issues that they do not have much time to check the forums and report their findings.

thilog · April 2014

I cannot imagine a group that is putting together an online version of elder scrolls could be ignorant of the state of mmo's today. That's just basic research. There game IS great fun.. I am having great fun, esp now that I am out of the level 1-20 blues.. I actually feel equal to most mobs and where before I saw 3 mobs in a group as "oh.. I can't kill that..." I see them as individuals.. I am calm when I engage, knowing which skills to deploy and when

But really.. I just wish the was a little more.. maybe 8 keys.. or even just 6.. take dual weapons.. I have 5 skills that I can actually use.. but I have to keep dropping one or 2 to add in a dot or heal.. or I'm swapping mid fight to fire out the resto staff to try to heal myself whilst running backwards (because the mobs seem to get a 500% damage boost if you're running away) It kinda detracts from the fun.. yeh.. could have a mate along.. my mate usually wanders off tho.. or stops to pick a flower... you know the types.. "wtf..help..argh" "Sorry, I saw a mountain flower...."

I totally get the csr side, I've worked in those departments, I seen the looks on peoples faces when someone drops 3 months worth of backlog on them and says "catalogue that" And they reply.. but that's 50000 log entries.. it's take 3 months.. and we have this, that and that to do as well... yeh i get that.

But that's all in the organisation, there's no excuse these days for such inability.. esp with such high unemployment in everyones country. Get it done.. or there's the door.

NordJitsu · April 2014

Don't blame the testers.

I was a member of Psijic Order testing. The problem was, our group was tiny. I said over and over again that there weren't enough people in the test for a lot of systems to be tested properly. This was especially true for PvP.

THIS GAME ONLY HAD ONE PVP TEST IN THE ENTIRE TESTING PROCESS!!!

Last fall there was a "first" (turns out only) PvP test where we all got level 50 templates and every except Cyrodiil was closed off. They talked about having multiple tests after that, but never did.

No, the weekend tests don't count. Those were zerg fests with level 15s running around whacking away at eachother with no-idea what they were doing.

The PTS was empty and most things worked great. But we obviously weren't able to test any issues that result from high player volume.

thilog · April 2014

I wasn't really blaming you, I've worked as an employed tester and as a public and alpha/beta tester, I'm aware of the problems.. it's like patching.. my main grip for years.. decades in fact.. is with patches.. they always use an older version of the game to patch.. which invariably adds old bugs back into the game, instead of waiting 24 hours and building on a current build to patch. But that seems to just be the way it's done.. maybe that's what they get taught at degree with honours level.. I stopped at degree level. It was boring enough by then.

There is just a failure to grasp the whole picture.. still, I am sure, eventually it'll all get fixed.. by which time, i'll probably have 2 characters on each realm at lv 50..

It's likely possible that they had employed testers testing pvp without the public testers knowing.

Oh and forget the typos.. too tired to correct them. The forum needs an auto spellchecker hehe.

frwinters_ESO · April 2014

So you guys were testers, who cares you got way off topic.

Yeah these botters are horrific and we all know ZSO knows how bad it is. We have all seen the reddit posts of GM's coming in personally to clear them. Only change i could think of is making the boss kill able once every 24 hrs per person or something.

thilog · April 2014

That would matter only if it was confined to dungeons, but the botters are now everywhere, running click scripts. Groups of templar base units spamming aedric jabs to collect greens/blues for decon.

MkChkn · April 2014

I've enjoyed that the bots are around the end bosses of public dungeons. Keeps them in a central predictable location. Plus I've never had an issue getting a hit on a boss so it helps breeze through them.

Plus I hope the don't take grinding bosses away since I'm pretty tired of questing and general kills don't add xp to VR levels.

Bris · April 2014

From the patch that is going in today -

Adjusted the time after you loot a delve or overworld boss before you are eligible to receive loot from these types of bosses again.

Not sure of the timing for the loot, but the way I play I don't stand around hitting them a few times over and over because that is rather boring to me. So for the most part I might only see them once. Only time I go back is to help guildies.

Also, I was only getting credit and not loot on any of them due to the bots. Too many bots hitting and I get too few hits for loot, but get the credit. Should be if I get the credit I get the loot for that first time at least. In some of the places I don't even think all the bots could possibly be getting loot due to how fast the boss's died.

Whether or not this time adjustment helps deter them, we shall see.

vyalar_ESO · April 2014

I like the idea behind the 'fix' where you can't get loot from a boss for 20min, but I really think it should be taken at least one or two steps further. I think you should have to re-enter the dungeon after the 20min period. In my honest opinion, however, I would love for there to be a 1 hour waiting period and a reentry requirement, but that's just me. Farming the boss, I guess I can get it if you aren't botting or generally breaking the TOS, but it's breaking my own personal game immersion even if five players are there farming (not botting).

reggielee · April 2014

they farm the high respawn rate of mobs inside the dungeons too, not just the boss. Just close whatever scripting/macro loophole they are using to do all the botting with, whether its node farming, quest farming, mob farming. Theres too much info avail for them to use to do this

players are buying the botting kits online, they are adding to the packs of gold farmers. pathetic losers

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · April 2014

20-hour cool down until you get anything from a frickin' boss.

If you can make people wait that long to feed their damn horse, then you can make them wait that long to get anything from a boss. Including xp.

This game is infested with dumpster divers.

OrangeTheCat · April 2014

I think there is only one question ZOS needs to ask itself re botters killing boss respawns: how do other games seem to avoid this? Then, "let's do that".

But it seems to me the obvious solution is to make these dungeons instanced or give the player\party the choice to enter an instanced version of the dungeon or the full-on public\non-instanced version.

kcolasaccob14_ESO · May 2014

I was feeling pretty doom and gloom by reading the forums but after testing it and seeing that it's only a 10 minute timer, I'm okay with that.

frwinters_ESO · May 2014

Part of me wants to see these dungeons instanced. I mean you go in an half the mobs are already dead cause 10 other people are here then you try to get your hit on the boss for the achievement and move on. The other part of me who doesn't have a lot of free time to play likes that I can usually guarantee getting through these dungeons cause people are always in them so I can quickly move on to something else.

Thechemicals · May 2014

I hardly get to see what public dungeon bossess do in a fight, just try to get a hit in before they turn corpse.